It may be over a year since the listeriosis outbreak that resulted in the death of 22 Canadians, but it is still very much fresh in our minds. We made one big commitment and that was our goal to become a global food safety leader. We’ve put that into action over the past year and made many improvements.  We’ve gone well beyond regulatory requirements in our testing to find and control listeria. We’re also implementing  newer rapid-testing  methods and protocols at our Hamilton Ontario plant on a pilot basis. Once th ese  methods are approved by the  Canadian government it will reduce the amount of time it takes to get test results from  about 6 – 8 days down to two days . This will be a big improvement  over the current situation and will enable faster response times for Maple Leaf, and any other food processors who choose to adopt the protocols.

It is widely accepted scientific fact that Listeria is commonly found in food processing environments.  What we have learned over this year is that by aggressively implementing control procedures and new technologies in our plants we can prevent the tragedy of 2008 from ever happening again.

At our Investor Day, which was held last Monday, I laid out  a comprehensive food safety strategy that will take us from where we are today to where we plan to be – a global leader – and what it will take to get there.  We expect that we will invest up to $50 million over the next three years to implement this plan. Have a look a the presentation on our website and let us know if you have any questions or comments.

The US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) launched launched an electronic food registry for companies to quickly report potential food-borne illnesses to the federal government.  Food facilities must alert the FDA within 24 hours of finding any contaminant in a product that might severely sicken or kill people or animals.  The system is intended to foster a quicker response to food-borne outbreaks.